1. Hist. A head, chief, or principal person.
2. Roman law. A person.
3. Roman law. A person’s condition or status.
“A ‘natural,’ as opposed to an ‘artificial,’ person is such a human being as is regarded by the law as capable of rights or duties: in the language of Roman law as having a ‘status.’ … Besides possessing this general legal capacity, or status, a man may also possess various special capacities, such as the ‘tria capita’ of liberty, citizenship, and family rights. A slave having, as such, neither rights nor liabilities, had in Roman law, strictly speaking, no ‘status,’ ‘caput,’ or ‘persona.’ … It must however be remembered that the terms ‘persona’ and ‘caput’ were also used in popular language as nearly equivalent to ‘homo,’ and in this sense were applied to slaves as well as to freemen.” Thomas E. Holland, The Elements of Jurisprudence 80–81 (4th ed. 1888).
